A network-attached storage (NAS) device is a server that is dedicated to nothing more than file storing and sharing. A NAS device does not provide any of the activities that a general-purpose server in an application server system typically provides, such as e-mail, authentication or file management. NAS devices allow more hard disk storage space to be added to a network that already utilizes “traditional” servers without affecting other aspects of the network. With a NAS device, storage is not a part of multifunction “server”. Instead, in this storage-centric design, the NAS device serves to only store and deliver data to the user. A logical NAS can exist anywhere in a local or wide-area network and can be made up of multiple networked or clustered physical NAS devices.
Unfortunately, experience has shown that the more storage that is attached to a network the more information a user will attempt to store. Storage hardware and data growth continues at a phenomenal rate, consuming more and more of the IT budget. Although storage is relatively inexpensive, it is still a resource that must be managed and the only way to moderate the need to grow data storage and thereby reduce costs is to control what gets on the storage system and its disposition (i.e. retention) once there. Consequently, storage capacity management tools are a critical component to address this runaway growth.
Several companies, such as NTP Software (NTPS), the licensee of the present invention, provide such data storage management tools. NTPS's QFS® software is one such tool that allows system managers to set and enforce policies that control how much storage a user can consume, what types of data they can store, and how long they can keep it. Such policy based data storage management helps lower the cost of data storage and prolongs the life of existing hardware.
There is a class of NAS devices for which third party storage policy management tools can only communicate with this class of NAS's operating system via the NAS vendor's event enabling framework software. This class of NAS devices inherently supports only limited data storage management tools and indeed to date, there is no comprehensive policy based management software available for this class of NAS devices. Further, the single-purpose operating system built into this class of NAS devices does not and cannot support such management software without substantial modifications and requires third party storage policy management software to communicate to the NAS operating system via the NAS vendor's event enabling framework software.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for facilitating the application of a data storage management policy on the class of NAS devices that employ event enabling framework software.